


Find the Universal Elements Enough

by thewaymyfoxwas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Angst, human!Cas, unintentional and very mild self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:44:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3544880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaymyfoxwas/pseuds/thewaymyfoxwas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is human.He is forgetful, he is not what he was, and humanity can be stifling.</p>
<p>He finds it's not only former angels that feel that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find the Universal Elements Enough

**Author's Note:**

> A million year old fic from tumblr that I'm only moving across now because...well, because I'm lazy. 
> 
> The 'mild self harm' in the tags - for those that need to know - refers to Cas getting agitated and absent mindedly scratching himself. He doesn't break the skin or anything, but if you're sensitive to that stuff, just be aware : )

He’s seconds away from sleep, burrowed into the cocoon of his blankets, when Cas speaks from his side of the bed.

“I can’t remember what we had for breakfast.”

Dean doesn’t open his eyes, mumbles ‘oatmeal’ into his pillow, and falls asleep before he can ask why it matters.

He’s awake again far too soon, his bladder rousing him from his dreamless peace. He puts off opening his eyes, reaching across the mattress on instinct before he thinks not to wake Cas up. But his hand only finds cool bedclothes where a warm body should be, and the sleep lingering in his body snaps out of him, ricocheting on every nerve on its way.

He forces himself to walk to the bathroom, fighting the urge to panic with every pad of bare feet against dark wood.

Cas wasn’t going anywhere.

They’d talked about this. Cas had been here for months, he’d been sharing Dean’s bed for weeks, and Dean had finally found it in him to lay it all on the line; how he ached when Cas just left, how he worried, how the amount he fucking missed him was actually a little ridiculous. There’d be no more wordless disappearances anymore, no more leaving Dean to wonder when he was coming back, if he was coming back at all. He’d promised.

The thought didn’t slow Dean’s heart rate much.  
At this point Dean was a seasoned pro at losing people. He loves, and is loved, and then somehow ends up alone again. People walk away, or they die, or have other priorities. Even Sam, the most constant thing in his life, has been taken from him, one way or another, too many times for comfort. And Cas…Cas had explained. How he’d never understood how it felt to be the one left behind. Wherever he was in the universe, he could hear the chorus of his brothers and sisters, the constant background hum of their song. And he could hear Dean, and Sam, when they prayed to him. He could extend his mind across land and ocean and dimensions and reach for them, could feel their presence and take comfort from it. He hadn’t known the ache of missing someone, of wanting so desperately to hear their voice, inhale their scent, to feel them as a solid weight at your side.

He spent a long time travelling to them when he fell, sleeping in doorways and being shooed on his way by police officers and shop owners. He understands now. And he promised he wouldn’t put Dean through that again.

Dean washes his hands, scrubbing at a callus on his palm, and reminds himself of this. He can feel a nervous churning building up in his chest, making his muscles twitch and flutter as his instincts tell him to worry, to run out of the bathroom and tear through bunker. He reaches for a hand towel instead, and ensures every digit and crease of his hands are bone dry before he allows himself to walk back into the hallway and look for Cas.

He finds him at the long wooden table Dean had claimed for dining – why this table in particular was unclear to everyone, including Dean, but sitting there meant that he was cooking, so no one ever complained.

Cas is sitting in his usual seat, nursing a coffee, tendrils of steam rising from inside the great bowl-like thing Charlie had given him for Christmas, clearly meant for a child, with an smiling cartoon angel and the words ‘Cas’ mug’ written in blue comic sans. The hand not currently wrapped around it rested against the table top, his fingers drumming a soft, erratic beat. Dean can just see where his legs fidget under the table. He seems to be jittering with unused energy, but his eyes are red, rimmed with dark, heavy bags, stark against the pallid complexion of his skin.

Dean drops heavily into the chair beside him at the head of the table and reaches out to stop the flittering taps, wrapping his hand around Cas’ own, and Cas grasps back.

“Nightmares?”

It’s a reasonable assumption. They’d both spent more than their fair share of time chugging red eye in the small hours to avoid having to sleep, too afraid of what they would see with their eyes closed.

“No. No, not nightmares.”

Cas sighs, deep and weary, and Dean says nothing. Cas still struggles vocalising how he feels sometimes. Human emotion is so complex, he’d said once. I don’t know how I’m supposed to explain it. Every language seems so limited. He’d been working it out, slowly. Dean found it was helping him, too, watching Cas come to grips with his own heart. He’d actually managed to say the Big Three Words without waiting for anyone to be dying, or dead, so that seemed like progress to be proud of.

He knows Cas is trying to organise his thoughts. Somewhere along the way, he’d developed the habit of looking down while he does it: closing his eyes, trying to shut out as much as possible, ignore the distractions of his senses. Talking only makes it harder for him, so Dean waits, helping himself to a mouthful of Cas’ coffee - oversweet and not as bitter as he’s used to - before placing it back in his hand.

“Before…what I was…Dean, I have been around for a very long time. I was there for the dawn of creation, the birth of humanity. I saw the first fish crawl out of ocean. Did I ever tell you that? And I remember it all. I can still tell you how warm it was that day, the way the sea smelled. Other than the things I was forced to forget, I remember, right back to the moment I was brought into existence.”

His hand releases the coffee cup, the other slides out from under Dean’s own, and then he’s standing, pacing, absently scratching at the skin on his forearm. Dean rises to meet him, grabbing his wrists.

“Hey, easy, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” he says, holding Cas’ hands against his chest. Cas’ face seems flat, too open: eyes wide and mouth pulled into a careful line, and his voice trembles with effort of controlling it. He looks afraid.

“Dean, I keep forgetting things. All of that, everything from before, I still remember it. But, but I couldn’t remember what we had for breakfast today. Charlie called about that convention next summer, and I’d forgotten the date an hour later. I had to text and ask her. Every time I get injured on a hunt, I’d forget to clean it, change the bandages, if you didn’t remind me. I could…I could remember all of this, before. I could remember, and I could heal you, and I could fly across the globe faster than walking to the car, and whenever I think about it, it’s like I’m trapped. And I’m not, I know I’m not. I want to be here. But…it’s strange. Every time I remember that I’m not the size of the Chrysler building anymore, that’s when this place just feels so small. ”

He inhales like he hadn’t breathed the whole time he was speaking, and Dean doesn’t think he did. He looks so lost, skittish. Like a frightened animal trying to decide whether to run, attack, or trust that the human is here to help, and Dean circles the pads of his thumbs of the skin on his wrists. Cas lets out a sigh, heavier than the last, and drops his head down, chin bumping his chest.

After a moment, Dean takes his abused arm in both hands, rubbing them gently up and down, from wrist to elbow, trying to coax away the pink lines Cas’ nails left behind. The sight makes him uneasy, but they aren’t deep, or angry. It doesn’t look like Cas wasn’t intending to hurt himself, anyway. But Dean had seen this before, in himself. He knows the feeling of getting so immersed in your own headspace, the feeling of being swallowed, like something is stalking you, preying on you, even when you’re perfectly safe. The itch, the need to escape from a mere thought.

That thought had been several things over the course of Dean’s life. The memory of scorching heat and crackling fire and the weight of his brother’s life in his little arms. The fear every time Dad was away longer than he promised – which, by the time Dean was ten, was more often the not. Every day after his dreams had taken him back to Hell. Having to deal with food and beds and people after Purgatory. Losing people, losing himself. Dean’s life was just a long list of thoughts, memories, feelings so intense, so overpowering that he had often felt the very visceral need to run.

Cas had plenty of his own now.

Today, it was the inadequacies of human memory. Tomorrow it would be having to travel in cars, or feeling cold, or the sickening guilt that just kept hitting him, over and over.

Either way, Cas was being torn in two by the desire to stay, to be here, with his family, with Dean – and to run as far and fast as he could, try to outrun every truth he didn’t feel strong enough to handle, and Dean can more than empathise.

He turns abruptly, dropping Cas’ hands and throwing a “wait there” over his shoulder as he heads back to the bedroom in long strides. When he returns, he’s wrapped in his robe and slippers, Cas’ own bundled in his arms.

He pushes them to Cas’ chest wordlessly, pointedly looking him in the face until he slips them on, the soft cotton hugging his skin from his feet to his shoulders. He grabs his hand as soon as he’s finished tying the knot of the belt around his waist.

“What exactly are we doing?” he asks, letting himself be pulled toward the stairs leading to the heavy front door.

“Ssh. Come on.”

Dean can almost feel the irritated eyebrow furrow being aimed at the back of his head and he can’t help but turn to flash him a smile, melting the expression off Cas’ face.

It’s cold out, the winter air especially bitter recently, and the robes aren’t really enough to protect them from it. Dean seems unfazed by it, though, leading them to where the Impala sits blocking the view of the door, a sleek black guard dog shielding their home. Cas stands with his arms wrapped tightly around him to watch Dean rummage in the trunk, feeling the irritation start to creep back in as the temperature stabs at his skin.

For a minute, the still night is filled with the clank and thud of guns and knives and bottles of all descriptions hitting against each other as Dean digs through the surprisingly deep pile of collected supplies, until, finally, he finds what he was looking for; a huge, thick woolen blanket, the red in its fabric faded and bobbled with age. He gently pushes and pulls at Cas by the arm, maneuvering him until he’s sat up on the car’s hood, legs stretched out on her chilled metal, and crawling up to sit beside him.

Dean throws the blanket out in front of him in a wave, unfurling it to full size, and tossing it over their shoulders like a cape. There’s barely an inch of space between them, but it leaves a small gap when Dean tries to bring the end of the blanket together, and it makes him smile a little too knowingly. Cas at least has enough pride to pretend to be exasperated before he scoots closer, letting Dean wrap an arm around him, closing their distance completely. The blanket smells like the leather in the Impala, the lingering scent of recently fired guns. Like whiskey and aftershave and something earthy and solid. Like Dean. Cas burrows further underneath, closer into the warmth of Dean’s side, wraps himself in it. 

“Are you going to tell me why we’re out here now?” he asks, the sound muffled where he’s brought the blanket up over his chin.

Dean pokes a finger out from under the folds of material, pointing up. The night is dotted with small, flickering lights, the stars enjoying the last couple of hours before the sun takes back the sky.

“Stars? You want to…look at stars?” Dean doesn’t miss the incredulity in Cas’ voice, and chooses not to take it too personally.

“Yep.”

“…Ok.”

They settle into the almost unbroken silence, and Cas, to his credit, cranes his neck up to watch the blinking white lights with Dean, despite the confusion still lining his face. Dean doesn’t mean to whisper when he speaks, but somehow, it seems wrong to do anything else.

“When I was a kid…I’d try so hard to be grown up, you know? Like, I’d think, they need me to be strong. My Dad was so sad, or angry, all the time…and then he’d be gone, or whatever. And Sammy was so little, and he didn’t know what was happening. And even when he was older, he’d want to be there for me like I was for him but, I dunno. I just couldn’t let him. Wasn’t the way it worked. I took care of Sam, I helped Dad, I made sure we ate and stayed safe and all that, that was the way it was supposed to be. That was my job. But…man, I was a kid, and sometimes I’d just…” he shuffles in his seat, looking down into the fabric covering them, picking at a loose thread tickling his hand underneath, and feels faintly pathetic. All these years, and he still can’t admit this stuff without a bad taste in his mouth. He feels Cas slide a hand over his, and reminds himself what he came out here for.

“Sometimes it’d get too much. Overwhelming, all that pressure. Sometimes I’d…God…I’d think about running away. To Bobby’s, or one of those care homes, or just away. Because I didn’t think I could handle it anymore. I was scared so much more often than I’d ever admit. Even just the training. Thought I was gonna hurl the first time Dad put a gun in my hand. I just wanted to run. But then I’d think about Sam, all by himself. And I’d think about everything that Dad told me, think about my responsibilities. And then I’d hate myself for being so selfish.”

“That isn’t selfish, Dean.” Cas says, his grip on Dean’s hand tightening. His voice is louder, clearer than Dean’s has been, and it sounds like a shout against the night air.

“I know. I do, I get that. I mean I still…whatever. Look, my point is, from being four years old, there’d be times when I’d just feel so friggin’ scared, and trapped, like I was suffocating, like if I stayed listening to Sam crying, or Dad explaining things I didn’t want to understand, or walking the length of some crappy little motel room for the thirtieth time I was gonna die, or go crazy, or just burst into tears and never be able stop. My point is…I don’t understand what you’re going through, not really. But this feeling? Like the walls are closing in and everything’s too much and you have to get out? Yeah. I get that.”

“Oh,” Cas whispers, his voice losing the firm edge it had before. “So…why are we out here, exactly?”

Dean relaxes into Cas’ side a little more. He hadn’t noticed himself tensing against his admission.

“Because when I’d feel like that, I’d do this. I’d come sit, right here, and I’d look at the sky. When I was little I used to think that my Mom could… see me better or something when I was outside? I dunno. I mean, I got older, stopped believing in all that – which is kinda weird to think about, considering who I’m sat with – but…it still made me feel better. Made me feel like I had more space, like the world could stop for a minute, let me breathe.”

“Oh.”

That’s all that they say for a long time, until the sky starts to brighten; black changing to deep indigo until the sun finally breaks with oranges and blues. Dean isn’t sure how long they’ve sat like that when he finally turns to look at the man next to him. Cas’ face, so close to his, is still turned upwards, the blue of his eyes and the shadows beneath them illuminated by the first rays of dawn. He looks tired and worn down and beautiful, and Dean feels his cheeks heat up even without saying out loud how it makes him feel heavy and weighted, and like he might float away all at the same time.

“Do you miss it?”

Cas starts a little, meeting Dean’s eyes with an expression of someone whose mind has only recently rejoined their body. “What?”

“Up there. Heaven. Your power. All that. I mean, I know it’s hard, but…do you miss it? When we get your Grace back – and we will, I swear – do you think you’ll take it back in? Go back?” Despite his best effort, he hears the waver, the fear in his voice. The drawn out eye contact makes it clear Cas heard it too, and he mentally kicks himself.

“Yes. I miss it.” Cas says, his gaze breaking away from Dean’s and back to the approaching sun, and Dean feels his every organ drop. He wants to speak, wants to assure Cas that it’s his choice, that he’s supported, but he can’t seem to bring himself to say the words, so he stays quiet as Cas’ continues, his voice sleepy and slurring just slightly. “I miss order. I miss clarity. And, yes, I miss power. This world is so often…crappy. It’s rough, and it’s cruel, and it’s unfair. Good people suffer terribly, young people die before their time, strong people are broken. Sometimes I doubt that my Father was ever present here at all. It’s…it’s crappy. And people are often crappy, too. But not always. Sometimes they give money to people with no way to repay them, or make each other coffee, or fight for what’s right instead of what’s easy. Sometimes people are more holy than I ever was with a halo and wings. Sometimes they love. And it makes this whole crappy world worth it.” He looks back to Dean, and the weight of those eyes on his face makes him realise how his mouth is hanging, his eyes round and staring. Cas’ face, though, is warm and soft, the smallest of smiles just visible there, the kind he has always only ever done for Dean.

“This is hard, Dean. It hurts, sometimes more than I think I can handle, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to point where it doesn’t, but…I’ve found my own things, as a human, that make it worth it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I have no intention of giving them up.”

He turns back to the sky, sliding down just enough to rest his head on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean can’t think of anything more to say.

His face feels numb with cold. His eyes are starting to itch and droop. Soon, they’ll go back inside. Dean will debate staying up, pounding coffee until his brain feels less fogged while he waits for Sam to wake up, and Cas will lead him back to their room by the hand, manoeuvre him until he’s lying back in their bed. He’ll get in the other side, and they’ll wrap around each other like they’re still cold, and sleep their way into the afternoon.

But, for a little while longer, they’ll stay out on the hood of Dean’s car as the sun comes up, Cas’ warmth mingling with Dean’s beneath a well-used blanket. Forgetful and breakable and overwhelmed, and not going anywhere.


End file.
